


Trapped

by StormBlue



Category: Warhammer - All Media Types, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Cannibalism, Deathkorps - Freeform, Depictions of Death, Gen, Mortifactor - Freeform, Space Marines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormBlue/pseuds/StormBlue
Summary: A Mortifactor and a Deathkorps deathrider meet in an unusual location, with something far worse than awkwardness stalking them. Written in first person.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a friend, between our two characters.

We are trapped. This is not new. Every child of Krieg worthy of the uniform knows how to dig their way out of dark, enclosed spaces. For a moment the old reflexes kick in. We are not surrounded by forgiving dirt and stone, no. This is metal. Tangles of wire snare our bodies and loops of twisted steel rips rubber and fabric. A smell, like hot copper, gets through even my mask. Someone is bleeding, or it could be me. I don’t feel pain, not while the comforting tang of sedatives collect at the back of my throat as I breath.

I note, however, that I am breathing hard. Crawling through a tunnel of metal barbs is exhausting, but every child of Krieg knows how to do this through soil. Adapt or die.

Except that this isn’t soil and we do not know how to compensate for this. There is a scream behind me, it is brief. A pop of light and the tunnel flickers hard. One of the men brushed up against a live wire and flash roasted in his uniform. I can smell their crisped flesh a moment later. 

“Get them out of the way!” I bark down the line of nameless bodies, making their way up behind me. There is so little room to move that the others are forced to crush the fried body against the severed electric grid. It continues to fry, but it’s enough protection to get the others by. It smells terrible. Hell, I can still hear their limbs jerking in the current, snapping and hissing like a flock of tweeting birds. 

We had best hurry before something catches fire, then. And we do. Slowly. The tunnel bends in ways no natural hole in the ground should, but we make it. The mouth of steel and grit vomits us out into a broken corridor littered with debris and body parts both fresh and very, very old. I see now we had been in the adjacent hallway, or what had been one before the impact. 

I do a head count as faceless soldiers climb out of the steel wound. Five. We are only five. All of us are bloody and dazed. I give them a moment to adjust their chemical regulators and hear deep, nervous breathing through the stillness. There’s just enough light to see by, but even that is guttering. Still, the fact that there is power here at all is...strangely comforting. It would also explain why I currently have only five and not six. No matter. The only true loss here is the uniform and equipment.

And our steeds. We feel distinctly at a disadvantage without them. We did not even attempt to look for them knowing what we would find. All blood and bone and little else. We could mourn our steeds later or join them in death. 

“Fox.” I call out. My voice is almost too loud. 

He stands a little straighter, his vulpine mask peering at me. It takes him only a second to figure out what’s needed, pulling the auspex from his hip. Blurs of static ripple in the dim for a moment. Nothing. It’s distressing. 

We aren’t supposed to be here and we apparently have no way out. It goes beyond our element and our teaching to a degree that our monotasked minds can’t process. We do not show fear in a way that true born humans do, but we have our ways. 

Fox tilts his head at the auspex and fiddles with it. Vulture crouched low and swears his head about, trying to hear. I clack my metal hooves against the decking. Click, click, click. The others all check guns, knives, ammo counts…

Soon all skulled masks face me. The crimson C emblazoned on my shoulder plate is a clear message. I am in charge. I need to figure out what to do.

“We find a working vox and auspex.” I announce. 

There is no need to agree, we just move. There is but one way to go and we file down it, guns shouldered and knees bent in a half crouch, wary of what’s above our heads. The way ahead is shrouded in darkness and dust, all looking strange and filmly through the lenses of our rebreathers. Yet this Hulk is clearly alive. I can hear the pipes in the walls breathing like a sleeping horse. It snorts, hisses and groans. Far too alive to be anywhere near comfortable. We are used to rats and tiny vermin scurrying from our feet but we only disturb rust and plumbs of steam. Too, it’s cold and terribly humid, all greys, reds and browns for what feels like miles. 

More than anything else is the silence. We aren’t used to that. Hostile battlezones and expanses of ceiling threatening to collapse on your helms are not soundless ventures for sure. It breaks only when a valve on the wall suddenly twitches loose and sprays Hyena with a gout of steam. Had they not been wearing head to toe protection it would have boiled them. As it was, they quickly pedaled away from the wash and was nearly floored from bumping into two others behind them. Tensions are high. While it might not seem like it, a fight nearly breaks out. Uniforms are yanked and weapon barrels are shoved away. Order restores itself but we are all clearly uneasy now.

Ahead, the lights are less sure. They flicker strong here and what is available is quickly growing spare. There are side corridors and yawning, open blast doors that yield nothing when combed through with a torch beam. Just miles and dead miles of empty that somehow breaths. 

Then a light pops. The lumen doesn’t just noisily turn off from a power surge, no. It comes apart in a cloud of fragments. We immediately form a ring, guns aimed at the now dark socket. Something moves, but it’s so swift it might as well have been a dust swirl. 

“We are hunted.” Vulture says slowly. He never speaks. 

“By what?” I ask, too sharply. Helms and skulls swerve my way, sensing weakness. I could have...should have asserted myself then, but I would deal with that later. If we got out of here alive.  
“You know how quiet the forest gets when predators are about.” He continued, as slow and measured as ever. Vulture is our Quartermaster and he is a grim character even by our standards.

“This isn’t a forest.” I say, but I feel he’s right. I refuse to admit it, though. “This is a Hulk. It’s not alive. It never was and never will be.” I remind them all with a snap of my hoof against metal. “If we are blessed it will be empty and we can find something here that works. If not, we’ll deal with it.”

It is not the fact that we are hunted that scares us, oh no. It’s the idea of never knowing the enemy. That our wounds might just be in our backs without ever having laid eyes on the bastard. It’s more than we can bear to think of, really. 

But, beyond the burst lumen, the rest is pitch black. Out stab lumens do some work but it brings only wavering cones of visibility washed out in hard yellow. It would do very little to prepare us for an ambush and our way is even slower for it. Boots toe forward, painstakingly removing obstructions and keeping a path ahead clear for the person behind them. 

It’s a terrible way for us to go about because we have to stay in communication almost constantly. A wave of voices every half minute or so. One. Two. Three. Four...Four?

“Hound!”

Nothing.

We stop moving. I can feel the others at my shoulder. 

One. Two. Three…

“Viper...viper!”

A moment later it had me, too. Hands that felt far too human pulled me away. I have no chance to shout and the gun is painfully yanked from my hands. I fight and reach, trying to lock eyes with my killer before I die. One skull meets the other. A murderous, ceramite helm caging the osseous remains of a brutalized Eldar skull. I know that is what it was because I have seen those skulls before. I know the whisper clatter of bone against armor. The high rising gorget obscuring the lower half of the helm and all of the neck. All of the icons of death and worship I was born to and learned about. A bone white Aquilla spread across the chest plate. 

An astartes stands before me and he does not let go. But nor does he kill me. I have no idea what his intentions are and I am not prone to taking chances. Yet what can I do but stare back?

A slow growl emerges from the vox grill at his gorget. “You are not supposed to be here.”

A stupid observation, really. Of course we aren’t. We’re years off course. 

“Aye, my lord. The impact…”

I am released, catching my hooves on the floor with an uneasy stumble. 

“I know.” He tells me. 

“You can release the rest of my squad now.” At this point I am irritated beyond control. He brushes past me, moving far quieter than he should. I follow, hooves ringing hard. 

“I do not have them.” He replied, then stopped so quickly I nearly ran into him. Between the darkness and his already black armor, he’s not much more than a solid shadow festooned with bone. Dramatic. “It has them, then They are dead.”

Their deaths barely register in my head, instead I focus on the what. “It?”

In a swish of material that I soon find out is actually a cloak I am swiftly whisked into another chamber entirely. How he is able to do this and seemingly ignore all laws of physics is beyond me but I am close to getting aggressive. Normally explanations can wait, but I have to have at least a plan. His silence held out a moment longer before he settled. Above him a lumen whimpered to life. It threw us both into a weak, sickly ambience and let me take my first real look at him. We study one another for what felt like a long moment. I warily watch as one finger, as thick as the barrel of my hellgun, ran along the skulled front of my rebreather. It used to belong to the first horse I rode upon, as nameless as I am. 

“Death worshipper.” He whispered reverently. 

“Deathrider.” I add. 

That seemed to be all he needed to know. Suddenly his demeanor changed as he stood to his full height. “I am Naori of the Mortifactors. Your number and rank?”

To say I am surprised would have been admitting I felt an emotion, but I am pleasantly surprised regardless. “Captain 24-WLF or Wolf.”

“Twenty Four.” He called, as if tasting the number on his tongue. Whatever he sensed satisfied him. “Yes. What hunts us is a unique entity that originated somewhere outside this Hulk. Supposedly of Dark Mechanicus making.”

“So, basically we could be dealing with a daemon in a machine.”  
He internally spat at the word. “If only. No, this is some twisted flesh creation of xenos breed that they decided to keep as a pet. Before it escaped and flayed them. Then it used their husks to get here.”

A body snatcher. Lovely. 

“So if I see another deathrider, shoot them.”

“Exactly. I see you catch on swiftly.”

“Sadly, I don’t have time to be stupid. So how do we kill this thing?”

He stopped full, rounding on me so quickly he seemed prepared to strike. “We? I work alone.”

“And?”

I realize this was insubordination, but the circumstances were unique and totally off script. A majority of my squad died on impact, the rest were taken right from under my nose. Not even a scream. I had no delusions that I could take this thing alone, but I wanted justice. It was not out of mourning for my squadmates, no. I felt nothing for them. We are, as children of Krieg, all created to die and to be spent as coins for the Emperor’s wars. 

No, the justice I wanted was that this thing lived and stole from me and so it must die. I know he felt the same. It was only appropriate. I stood my ground even as Naori loomed over me as if he were a pillar fit to collapse. 

“At least let me be bait.” I attempt. 

I realize now he was beginning to get annoyed. An annoyed Space Marine is almost as dangerous as an angry one, I’ve learned. They are far more prone to simply killing than listening at this point. The idea that he might very well silence me for good is in the back of my mind. If he were to put it to action I would not blame him for it. Space Marines are a breed apart from anything else and we are but insects in comparison, yet I would not back down. To sit this out while Naori hunted a killer was a waste of my life and my time. I could not stand to be alive and be useless like this. He is better off murdering me where I stood than leaving me here. 

At some point I must have disturbed him a little. A gleam of bone, different in sharpness and texture from the rest, flashed in his palm. He’d drawn a dagger of some sort, fashioned from a great talon. He was prepared to kill me, but the fact that I was staring at him, asking for it, put the Mortifactor off.

“Do it.” I whispered. 

I heard a soft, wheezing gasp coming from him. It was an exhale. He clicked the dagger back into place on his armor and stood, reluctantly. 

“Your kind truly are death worshippers, in ways I do not like. But I will work with you.”

I do not bother trying to thank him. It would be an offence to both of our prides. “Then let me know what I need to do.”

“Bait.”

“Understood.”

It was simple, really, yet so much more complex than the Mortifactor let on. But I knew, or could at least pick up the context. He was a trapper. He prefered chasing his prey to exhaustion by repeated trapping in snares and fixtures purposefully meant to be broken out of, with enough effort. It gave the prey a false sense of hope while, at the same time, sapping them. Would it work with a xeno entity capable of walking in the skins of the dead? 

Sadly, that sort of thinking is above my rank and I’m not prone to asking questions. He shows me a rough layout and expects me to follow. And I do. 

For now I am prowling an ancient antechamber that might have once been a meeting room but was not flipped on its side. Windows that once peered into the hard vacuum of space are obscured with abrasions and massive nests of wire that seem to move if you stared at them for too long. But I know better. Naori had purposefully rigged the already sparse lighting to illuminate only certain corners. I presume he has cameras too. 

I am wholly uninjured and alert and yet the entity still surprises me. It did not go after me. At least not in a way I understood as logical. Somehow it knew Naori was behind this and swiftly decided I was the least threatening thing in this Hulk. Indeed, because the lights unlatched themselves from their housing and panned around the room, scanning. They fall on me and...do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Effectively ignored, my own plans begin to form. 

Tiny sparks along the wall trail through exposed wires and vanish into a junction. I know not where Naori nested but I could guess well enough the thing was going for him. Acting against orders, and really against my own will, I began to run. Rushing out the chamber, gun hot and hooves pounding. I could hear Naori’s side of the vox link spooling up, but I swiftly shut it off. I am dead focused. The trail of sparks means that, somehow, the entity is able to move through cable and wire. Cutting it off would be an impossible task in a dead ship full of nothing but. 

I catch up with the tracer and, without thinking, I shove my gloved hands into the nest of electric spiders. The same smell of crisping meat that permeated the tunnel I crawled out of fills my mask. The pain is so surreal I am all at once detached from my mind and registering it as casually as the bite of a blood fly. Suddenly it surges and the pain leaves me immediately. I did not expect the thing to have a form, honestly. And still it really didn’t. If you have seen arcs of lightning jumping between radio towers in a summer storm before, this was hardly any different. Serpentine and too bright for unprotected eyes to look at, the thing had no sight with which to study me with, but nonetheless I knew it watched me. I drew my knife, stalking towards a being of pure, unrelenting energy. If such a thing was capable of laughing, it did. Jagged lines of electricity snared my augmented legs and they immediately seized. I crash to the floor, immobile and burned. 

It bolts away, far too fast for normal eyes to see. 

I force myself off the floor, force my legs to obey me. They hurt and the augments are going to take surgery to fix, but I can walk. Slowly. It hurts something horrible and my chemical regulator is fried so I endure it as I am expected to. Agony is an excellent motivator and I use it to keep going. It did not kill me because it did not see me as a threat and I would make it regret that. 

Sounds of battle are ahead although it's not as simple as bolters firing or blades being swung. It is the din of thousands of watts of power being shut off and rerouted around busted conduits and terminals. As I stagger after the noise, built in speakers run hot and then melt. Lumens violently burst in a cloud of glass shards. Pipes holding steam pop open and fill the corridor with gouts of steam and intense heat that I steadily ignore. It is not for me. I can see Naori swinging a massive bone sword through cables as thick as I am while something hot and nova-bright screamed over the buzzing, tweeting rampage of electricity spilling forth. His own voice is a pitched roar fit to put lions to shame. 

But I do not care.

My plasma pistol spools up, washing me with even more heat until I can feel my sleeve starting to catch. I power, slowly, through the storm of power and light. I fire. It narrowly misses the Mortifactor and strikes a structure that looks like the head of a striking cobra in outline. Violently it distorts and dances like a disrupted pictfeed. Startled, Naori swiftly moves away even as I stand there, numb. Gun barrel thick strands of lightning thin out and the staggering heat eventually fades. The corridor flickers once then goes dark. 

“...is it dead?”

“...yes.” I hear the reply in the shadows. He activates a stab lumen a moment later and I truly see the damage it had done to him. He no longer had accents of bone. What had been there was burned black or blasted from his armor in strikes of thunder. The helm skull was largely intact, but the ceramite around it looked warped, glowing with a soft orange halo. Superheated. 

Gingerly he pulled off the helm and cringed as flicks of flesh went with it. To my honest surprise he looked largely...very normal. Normal, and confused.  
“I have hunted that thing for a full decade. It killed my own squadmates. All you had to do was shoot it. I’ve never managed to shoot it.”

I shrug. I’m too sore to say much. “It considered you a threat and disregarded me completely. Animals kind of do that, so I treated it as an animal and kept coming at it. Most predators don’t expect prey to fight back like that.”

For a moment he seemed angry, enraged even. But the emotion bled from his eyes a moment later. I would have said more, but discarded the idea. 

“I let revenge be my downfall in this.” I could not read the emotion on his face, but nor did I want to. This was a private moment and I had snagged a kill that was his right to claim. I would have felt bad had I not performed what was expected of me. Killing a xenos. 

He sucked in a breath. “Sup with me. The entity had no flesh, but I have butchered plenty of prey things and we will partake in their meat.”

I’ve little idea what he means, but I am hungry and wounded and in need of a medic. I nod and stagger after him, raw and bloody. Beaten, skeletal things returning to the nest.


	2. Flesh and Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naori must decide what to do with his new human guest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP this was only supposed to be a one-shot but my friend and I got to talking more. Expect more chapters maybe?

Idling in what remained of the cargo hold, a Corvus Blackstar blurted in warning as it detected an entity that was not originally part of its single passenger. Its pilot, an Iron Hand techmarine, soothed its spirit with a swift auspex scan, settling only when it pinged back a signature. A single, largely unarmed human closely following on the heels of his wayward squad member.

“Explain, Naori.” The vox was sent as an emotionless blurt, but he was indeed annoyed.

“She is a guest.”

“We do not entertain guests.”

“No, but I do. Now.”

Responding immediately to its pilot’s growing irritation, the Blackstar spooled up its bolters with a heady snarl. But the techmarine chirped and gently overrode the sensor alert. “So you do.”

Naori barely suppressed his own flare of anger, waiting with reluctant patience at the tailgate of the great bird. For her part, the woman behind him remained utterly silent, staring up at the barely visible war machine cloaked in darkness with a posture so dull as to be borderline disinterest.

It took an embarrassingly long time for the techmarine to trigger the release.

The Mortifactor worked well with painfully few of his squad members, both new and old. All too often their personalities were too much alike. Such was the instance with Jurulius. The Iron Hand was curt to the point of rudeness if one didn’t know him well enough and indeed few did. Naori thought he had the personality of an iron slab, which might be entirely purposefully on the techmarine’s part.

Ascending the ramp, Twenty Four was quick to follow. Her limp had only steadily worsened since their half hour journey to the extraction point. Conversation was minimal. Naori still intended to share the ritual meat with her, but in all honesty the Watch would need to question her, given her status as sole survivor. A fact that, when pointed out to her, hardly bothered the deathrider. That she hardly seemed bothered by much of anything unsettled the hunter more than having his kill stolen by a mere human.

It was around this time that the engines began to turn over and the gate kicked shut. She breathed in and finally removed her mask. It was a melted, distorted mess warping over the skulled front, the seals no longer intact. Naori could smell the burnt rubber on her breath when she exhaled. It would be another hour before they returned to the Watch Station and so she started to settle and disarm as if this were the back of a Valkyrie. There was something to be admired for her boldness, at least. 

Naori, too, was grateful that Jurulius did not see fit to ask about the details of the mission. Although he would certainly be getting a briefing later once the Mortifactor was required to report it. He knew exactly what the Iron Hand would say too. That he should have packed a wider, varied loadout. Should have done this, should have done that. 

All of it would be sensible critique, which only served to irritate the hunter more. 

But, for now, he had to deal with the woman. She had, for all intents and purposes, either gone to sleep or passed out. Her damaged augments were that of a hoofed animal, digitigrade and clutched tight to her torso, spine wedged into the far corner. It brought on nagging memories of old meals. Times when he had found prey and been unable to resist their flesh even if he wasn’t strictly starving. Those were the old ways of doomed Posul, devoured by an even greater Hunger. He’d never been able to divorce himself from such urges. He felt them now, watching her slumber. 

A newborn cervine was such a meal once, during a grueling mission hunting a Drukhari in a twisted forest almost as dark as his homeworld. Ten days tracking a desperately fleeing Lhamaean, sickened into a rage when her poisoned dart found the soft seal between gorget and helm. The morning of the eleventh day, he finally had to stop, the poison made all the worse by a sudden gut splitting hunger boiling in his stomach. He found relief only when he’d thrown his helmet off and dug his fingers into the grass, intending to eat anything he could grasp. Then he’d found it. A soft, simple oval of flesh and fur. So new. Perhaps only a few hours old and nearly invisible in the undergrowth. It didn’t make a sound as he snapped its neck and put its teeth in it. All in the same motion. Quick. Painless. 

Twenty Four looked like so much new meat, curled up in the corner. Seemingly as helpless as that fawn. Naori didn’t realize he was drooling until the Blackstar lurched, pulling him out of his memories. He knew Jurulius would see it. Knew Naori was looking at the human like she was food. The Mortifactor could not deny it. He was hungry. Cuffing spittle from his lips, he turned and glared at the vox caster lingering above his head, as if daring Jurulius to speak. The Iron Hand, if he was watching at all, ignored him and his guest both. 

The hunger still had him but he was clearer headed now, distractedly checking the chronometer embedded in his vambrace. It shocked him how little time had passed. Frustration quickly made the hunger worse. It shouldn’t be doing this to him after such seniority in the chapter. Those flaws should have been controlled. That he was so easily triggered by mere memories and a sleeping woman made him feel...tainted. Had he still been with the Mortifactors, Naori would have sought counsel from one of the chaplain-shamans. In their absence he could rely only on the death sleep for guidance, and so he did. It was rare he needed to slip into his near-death after battle, but knew he was edging dangerously close to something dark and terrible. If he did not...and so the ritual words spilled from his mouth, body becoming insensate as he slid to the decking. The moment his armored form settled, his mind was gone.

When he opened his eyes again they looked down upon an endless plain of wet riverstones, all black and gleaming in a hard red dusk. Distant mountains toothed at an even more distant and cloudless sky, the sun already hidden behind a low crown of rock so many miles outward. There was very little else here except a few inches of water and the countless riverstones stretching from end to end, in each and every direction. It would have reminded him of devoured Posul were it not for the sunlight lingering at the edge of the earth. But that too would soon be gone, he supposed. Stars were already threatening to explode in their billions across the vault of the sky, leering and crimson. Naori was just beginning to wonder if the dusk he saw was in fact the Imperium of Man, slowly sliding into black oblivion when he heard it. 

A sharp, bugling call that echoed over the stones. Naori didn’t discern its origins until he heard it again, to the magnetic north. The creature approached him at an unhurried pace, clearly an elk in build but had little else in common with the species that had once existed on old Terra. Where it’s antlers should have stopped at a certain size, what this thing bore on its head seemed to match Naori for size and weight, countless points exploding from its bony crown. Too, its head, which he previously thought was just white fur, was indeed a flensed skull of completely normal portions compared to its colossal horns. But only its head was exposed bone. The rest was huge and muscular, made all the larger by dense black fur made to stand sub-arctic temperatures. It made little sense in the relative balm of the plain they found themselves on. Its weight must have been massive for the heavy clunk of its cloven hooves were loud in the relative silence. It cried out again, skinless jaws hanging unnaturally for a lack of sinew. For a moment Naori thought he could see a colorless white in the depths of its maw, but then it snapped close and tossed its head, great mane flicking. 

By the Primarch, it was bigger than Naori initially thought. Head and shoulders above even his armored frame. And it was not a prey animal as its build suggested. No, its jaws were filled with wild fangs, thrusting at every length, in every direction. Darkened red with the blood of old kills. Even its truly massive and senseless antlers were dark and strung with minute threads of gore. 

Oh, it was not a predator. Naori knew that just from looking at it. But still a killer. A thing that murdered other beasts for daring to hunt its imposing form. A herd guardian. A fully grown bull animal of whatever cursed species it belonged to. Naori shivered. Such creatures exemplified what it meant to hunt. The dance between life and death that was his chapter’s bread and butter. Without thinking he hung himself low and began to circle the beast, stalking as he would any other prey. 

This was a mistake.

He heard only the clatter of hooves before he felt the slam of its antlers slicing against the protection of his power armor. They did not penetrate yet he was still effortlessly flung back and away, landing painfully in a gush of water and stone. Rolling, Naori cursed and reached automatically for his bone knife, but found himself immediately grappling with a toothy maw clamped around his wrist. Far sooner than he expected. It was like he couldn’t get the orientation of the creature at all. Despite his struggles the knife wheeled from his grip. Clawing back and up, Naori stared hard at the empty eye sockets of its head, trying to find something in those pitiless depths. There was nothing. Just the promise of light and death. 

But it did not charge at him again, instead clattering its jaws together as if judging how he tasted. The ceramite of his wrist guard broke several tusks, tumbling in broken shards from its mouth. It still had so many more. One hoof stamped loudly in challenge, head lowered. He began to understand. Naori lacked antlers and hooves, but he could see that this creature thought of him a rival of its own species. 

It was only then that the hunger started to fade, locking eyes with the beast as he began to shed the rest of his armor. Ceramite went crashing to the stones, leaving him in only his bodysuit. Naori dropped to the ground, feeling a power surge through him like never before. It was as if shedding his armor unchained a part of his soul. When he opened his eyes again, his hands were sickle claws covered in black, shaggy fur. His forelegs, once arms, were little different. Hunch backed and powerful, he stalked on all fours with his low slung head aimed towards his rival. Small round ears pinned flat to his naked skull, clean of all flesh.

His rival began to bugle in challenge and in turn he let out a thunderous roar in response that was not at all human. Fangs as long and sharp as his flensing knife flashed in his jaws, then he was moving. Too quick to have been fueled even by Astartes reflexes, he was but a sooty blur as he rocketed toward the neck of the other beast. It quickly ducked its head, countless points of solid antler replacing its vulnerable neck, but Naori had planned for that. His powerful forelimbs lashed out, paws as large as his hands had been slapping into the hard curve of the left branch, close to the skull. He had hoped to snap its head back into position but such was his new found strength that bone points splintered under the heavy blow. 

By then his body completed its trajectory and slammed into the head of the other beast, jarring both creatures as flesh and bone met in a violent embrace. Naori hissed, pelted with fragments of keratin and raked with the inside barbs of the right antler. He heard it screaming under him as his sheer weight drove it to the stone, tusked jaws cracking with the impact. Instinct drove him more than anything tactically minded, heavy paws flailing and bashing at the living branches that kept him temporarily pinned against the neck and skull of his rival. His rival, equally driven by rash instinct, could not lift its head and so stabbed at him with cloven hooves. Just as many blows missed as connected. Soon he began to smell blood, but not all of it was his. 

At last he lost all solid purchase. It flicked its head, rolling him free. Vaguely he realized something came off and lodged in his shoulder, but the pain was a red mist of hunger in his predatory body. He flung himself upright and roared again, brandishing tooth and claw as easily as bolter and sword. Naori could see the damage then. Part of his rival’s lower jaw was missing, left broken at its hooves. Numerous points were missing from the left antler where he’d landed and many were gone from the right, likely all but stabbed into his flank. 

His claws, too, had gathered a large splatter of the beast’s blood and he bent down quickly to taste it. That was it. He knew he needed to kill it. It might be a herd guardian, a bull animal of its species, but he was born to hunt it. He knew this the moment he tasted its blood.

The sheer lack of emotion was the purest of pleasures for him. No thoughts, no ire, just a dire certainty. And so when he moved again it was with a renewed vigor he’d not felt since his first blooding. He darted, feline-quick, feinting to the right and forcing his rival on the off-foot to the left. It could not kick him and its head was too slow to meet him. Naori’s jaw opened without needing to think of it, bottom jaw distenting to a terrifying degree to clear his great scimitar fangs as they found the neck of the beast. It was not a perfect bite, but it was enough. It found flesh and soon blood. That sweet vitae. 

Naori was able to enjoy it even as the beast screeched in agony and bucked hard enough to steal the wind from his lungs. Still, his grip was absolute and his claws sharp, finding purchase on skin despite its great mantle of shaggy fur. The dizziness was only temporary. His fangs did its work, painfully wrenching free a massive chunk of bleeding meat. A sound far too human for comfort yowled from its mouth as it slowly knelt to the stones, hooves scrabbling and broken jaws snapping. Naori had the hunk of flesh still in his mouth as he gently slid free from his kill. 

Another space marine was slumped where the beast had laid down to die, his neck a red ruin. He was clearly dead, eyes bulging red where blood had rushed into the vessels and popped in their great struggle. Part of his fleshed skull was caved in, broken by an unimaginably lethal force. Naori stood then, mindlessly opening his mouth. Spitting violently when he tasted the bitter, offal flavor of geneseed on his tongue…

Naori woke with a jolt. His armor, having auto-locked the moment he became insensate, growled in protest of the sudden motion. He had drooled liberally against the soft seals of his gorget, tinged with enough acid to bite a hole through the rubber. Strangely, he felt as if he’d been thrown into a bout of true sleep instead of the dismal meditation he had originally invoked. Naori wasn’t supposed to dream, but apparently he did and had. The heretical taste of his fellow Astartes’ geneseed still coated his mouth and tongue. 

The Corvus Blackstar was no longer in motion. In fact they had already landed, the drop gate gaping open. And had done so for a time already. Twenty Four was gone, but visible idly sat on one of many identical metal crates lining the hanger of the Watch Station’s holds. Noari tensed, his body sluggish as he peeled himself off the decking and sauntered down the ramp, realizing that he should be embarrassed. 

To his immense surprise, the human was without her legs, the stump caps visible and clearly darkened with heat damage. He could, however slightly, smell the burnt meat of her and scowled. He was about to ask where the techmarine was and why she was going about without her augments when the sounds of busy repair rang out. Jurulius was no better than an iron scorpion, hunched over a hastily erected workbench some yards to the right. His too many mechanical limbs, arachnid-like, bent and scuttled with considered motion, rotating, welding and hammering.

Twenty Four, apparently unbothered by Naori’s irritated expression, thumbed at the Iron Hand. “Lord Jurulius wanted to look at my legs.”

Naori almost hissed at her, but the sound was too feline in his mind and so it never left his throat. Instead, he grunted. “Has he said anything else?”

“No, lord. I suspect he was...waiting for you to wake and got bored.”

Typical. The damned techmarine likely tried to rouse him, failed, then decided to vent his frustrations upon the woman’s damaged augments. Twenty Four looked about as bored and angry as he suspected Jurulius was.

“Techmarine! Are you quite done tinkering?” The Mortifactor snarled, perhaps sharper than he should have. There was a moment, close enough to true fear as possible, as the Iron Hand simply...stopped.

The Mortifactor had the sense of mind to grunt and move his hands away from the talon knife at his belt as Jurulius finally stood up and stamped over to his position, barely contained fury prominent in every step. He’d seemingly forgotten that Jurulius was, by and large, almost a full head and half taller. Certainly bigger in terms of mass. Expecting a blow, but only receiving a hard stab with a finger to the chest.

“Your flesh is weak, Mortifactor.” Jurulius snarled, vox caster washed with static. To Naori he looked and sounded like a mechanical dragon provoked out of hibernation. “I can understand why the human needs to rest. I expect weakness from such creatures, but you? Next time you wish to nap, Mortifactor, do so in your own cell.”

Twenty Four, below them both, remained motionless and expressionless. She did not flench even as the Iron Hand let out a frustrated sigh that was more a hiss of steam than any human sound. Two of his more massive limbs bore her augmented legs, handing them off to the only two appendages that made actual sense besides his legs. His arms.

Obediently and without commentary, Twenty Four leaned back and allowed the techmarine to reattach them, only looking away when he grumbled. “These are not standard issue.”

“No, my lord.”

“But they are...adequate.” He allowed, rarely. 

“Yes, my lord.”  
Yet again, Naori felt a pang of jealousy towards the woman. Jurulius was hardly impressed by much of anything. Earning any sort of approval from him was rare. The Mortifactor had little idea why he was even upset about that. Gaining the techmarine’s favor was so low on his list of priorities as to be non-existent. The unbidden jealousy irked him. 

However, there was suddenly very little time to process because the embarkation doors slid open to admit a single figure into the gloomy hanger. Like Naori and Jurulius both, The newcomer was clad in the stealth black of the Deathwatch, left arm and pauldron sheened in hexagrammic silver. The other, a blood-red fist clutching a cluster of lightning bolts, imposed upon a white field. Whatever spats the two marines were about to continue immediately broke off as they stood at attention and saluted. Even passive, bored Twenty Four immediately got to her hooves and made the sign of the Aquilla over her chest, head bowed deep. 

Watch Master Avraham went with his features habitually hidden behind a severely battle damaged helm, its red lenses naked and staring like lidless eyes. The rest of him was little better. Pitted, scarred and chipped ceramite ground against old, oft repaired armor joints and partially exposed soft seals. His armor still gleamed, but it was with a sheen that Naori thought of as polished bone. A cloak that had once been plush red velvet hung limp from the silver pauldron, a ruin of tatters and threads that clung together as stubborn as its wearer. There was no mistaking him for anything else but an Excoriator. A looming, damaged shape that stalked towards them in the quiet that soon settled across the hanger. 

Lord Avraham stamped to a halt just a little too close to Naori for comfort, but the Mortifactor refused to back down. He did divert his gaze, only slightly. The Excoraitor’s stare lingered a second then looked down at the human, barely much taller than his waist. She did not move.

Without looking away from her, Avraham’s voice crackled forth from an old vox caster. “Naori. Report.”

“The entity is dead.” The Mortifactor said without emotion. “Dispersed by a plasma shot from the woman. She was...an unknown factor in the hunt, but proved useful. She and her unit crashed into the space hulk, crawling through the tunnels until the entity began to pick them off. When only she was left, we began to work together to trap it. It did not go as planned. The entity surged into the power systems again and there was an attempted overwhelming. But it made the mistake of disregarding the woman as anything dangerous and she managed to slay it after it injured her. I...decided to bring her back with me. To share the ritual meat and report on the incident.”

Silence rang for a few more seconds than it should have. Avraham was a man of few words, but never poor timing. The Mortifactor was about to say more, expecting the Watch Master to demand more, but he was immediately cut off.

“Do you plan on keeping her?”  
“...my lord?”

Avraham’s head snapped in his direction. “Are you keeping her, Naori?”

“That was not my intention, my lord.” Naori forced himself to say without pause. From his left, Jurulius stared at him in what must have been bare disbelief had he gone unhelmed. But not even the Iron Hand dared to speak. 

“You and the human. Come with me.”

Twenty Four disengaged her stance and made to follow straight away, even as Naori, again, forced himself not to pause. An odd, unfamiliar sense of regret began to manifest as a knot in his gut. He had a hard time distinguishing it from flesh hunger. A disturbing thought, but one he had little time to contemplate because his Watch Master was soon turning away with a grind of servo-motors, marching from the room. Jurulius said nothing, even if the Mortifactor felt him staring at the back of their heads. Avraham had not given him a single order, which must have either ranckled or relieved the Iron Hand. Naori did not bother to care.

As they left the hangar, Twenty Four was forced to jog to keep up with Lord Avraham’s lengthy steps. Even Naori had to pick up the pace, lest he fall too far behind and be brought to question. Watch Master Avraham rarely ever bothered much with humans, so this was a surprise the Mortifactor found distinctly unpleasant. So he directed his eyes not at his Master, but where they were going. 

The Watch Station itself was one of the most isolated, and indeed suited the squads that holed up here. All chapters present rarely, if ever, got along with their founding chapters. Or even other Imperial forces for that matter. For Naori’s chapter it was the rituals of meat and blood that disgusted Guilliman’s purer successors. For the Excoraitors, Avraham’s chapter, it was the obsession with pain and Dorn’s doleful legacy that separated them from the rest of their cousins and brothers. 

As for the Relictors...well…

Naori figured out where they were going quickly enough. Between the snatches of vox-conversation he heard clicking through his com-bead and the direction they were taking, he knew they were headed to the Station’s obscure and poisonous librarius. By rule of thumb and by his own choices, the Mortifactor hated pyskers not issuing from his own chapter. Least of all the Relictor who nested here. Brother Bertilak reminded him of a spider, weaving threads of prophecy and damnation that felt a little too close to home for his liking. Most of the predictions the Relictor had uttered about his own squadmates was enough to make Naori dislike him. 

They arrived after perhaps an hour of navigating through a web of shelves and devices of the occult, many with unsavory and rare origins that began to talk if you stared at them too long. Even Avraham was disquieted coming here, if only indicated by giving one plinth a particularly wide berth when he moved around it. Naroi did not bother to try and look at what was clamped to the base save that it appeared to be a mammalian shape stretched to impossible portions, frozen as still as a statue. 

Brother Berlitak was waiting just on the other side of the plinth, fully armored save for his habitual lack of a helm. His face always looked suspiciously normal save for his eyes. Oh, Throne, the Relictor’s eyes were a little too much like a Drukhari’s for Naori’s comfort. Dark grey sclera framing sunset irises with very little visible pupil. It was a consequence of staring into the Immaterium for too long. It had to be. There was no way that was a natural feature of the man’s face. Twenty Four made a frown, but seemed so unbothered that Naori began to think, maybe, the woman was doing this on purpose. 

Berlitak rumbled something that sounded runic in nature and the frozen creature slowly unfurled one arm, handing the librarian his force weapon. It was the most unusual of the sort Naori had ever seen. It was but a simple dagger, but it’s shape and aura was unholy. A daemon weapon, subsequently beaten into submission by Berlitak in some twisted, reversed ritual. He hated it, and hated the thing that was being forced to guard it. 

Once the dagger was returned to its owner, Berlitak turned and addressed their Watch Master with respectful tones. “My lord. You wished to have them screened?”

“Indeed. Report your findings. I will not tolerate any behavioral deviances in my Station.” 

Naori resisted the urge to talk back to that. But Avraham had a point. The sheer cliff they all found themselves on relating to their loyalty to the Imperium, based solely on the terrible reputations of their own chapters, was enough to justify it. Naori knew that. The Mortifactors themselves could be considered savages without question. The Relictors by large were stomping all over the lines between Heresy and Oath. Berlitak alone had made a mockery of it. It would not take much for a brother of this squad to come into question. 

And so, when the Relictor looked at him, the Mortifactor did not immediately put a fist in his face. Something like fire squirmed in the depths of the epistory’s eyes. Something that was a little too alive. Naori kept himself still even as an icy sensation slid down through his skull and into his brain stem. It was a slow, cold knife pushing into his flesh. Too sharp to feel outright but he knew it was inching so very close to his vitals with surgical precision. Then it was gone and the fire-flicker fled from Berlitak’s eyes. “You have been having strange dreams, even for you.”

“And?”

“Perhaps we should analyze them?”

“Not by you.” Naori snarled.  
“Yes, by me. But not now.” Berlitak replied with something close to curiosity. Then he frowned and looked at the human. Finally, she gasped in response as the librarian’s hand shot out and snagged her chin. Twenty Four protested for only a moment, moaning quietly before she was dropped. A small trickle of blood issued forth from her nostrils. The deathrider grunted and scrubbed it away with a hiss.

“Interesting.” Berlitak continued to stare at her. “Very interesting.”

Avraham growled. “But are they clean, brother librarian?”

“Oh.” The Relictor replied distractedly. “Surprisingly, yes.”

“Surprisingly?” 

“Indeed, my lord. Deviations...I will need to look into them, but there’s no influence from Chaos to speak of. Of course not.” He snorted. “At least nothing I would consider a risk.”

Avraham did not look immediately convinced. “Very well. I expect a report, Berlitak. You know that.”

Berlitak sketched a smile that did not reach his eyes, making the sign of the Aquilla. “As my lord wishes.”

As Avraham turned to go, Naori made to follow, but the Relictor’s hand on his pauldron made him stop. 

“Do not touch me! I will speak to the chaplain, Relictor. Not you.” 

“Is that so? Or are you challenging the Watchmaster’s orders?”

“He made no such orders that I need to stay with you.” 

“Don’t be dense, bone worshipper. I can see the hunger in your aura. I can tell your soul craves for a taste of that woman’s flesh.” 

Twenty Four scurried back as Naori surged forward, aiming to put his armored weight into the Relictor’s bulk. The challenge was not unusual. The librarian trusted Naori almost as little as he trusted Berlitak. There was a brief struggle before the Relictor’s backpack slammed into the stone wall behind him, powerdering rock and rattling nearby tables. The Mortifactor’s naturally sharp teeth were bared, but stopped just short of putting them in Berlitak’s throat. Hovering just a few centimeters from his left eye was the shimmering point of the force dagger. The episotry did not hold the weapon. It had unsheathed itself in defence of its master.

“Do you really want to do this here?” Berlitak whispered dangerously. “In my own domain?”

It was not a threat, so much as tactical critique. Calling out the Mortifactor’s poor behavior. Naori cursed and shoved away from the librarian. He knew his position would be precarious even with the rest of his more compliant squadmates now. They were all little better than wolves maintaining a strict pecking order. Himself included. All it took was for one alpha to show weakness and the rest would have their fangs out. It was exactly the sort of disorder that Avraham encouraged to weed out the weak. Force the bad seeds to the very bottom. It was exactly the sort of law that devoured Posul had obeyed. There, the weak were simply eaten. 

Naori had little reason to disregard it. Up until it was suddenly not in his favor. 

“We will settle this in a more formal fashion, Relictor.”

“How considerate.” Berlitak snorted. “Then by all means, speak to the chaplain.” 

Naori did not bother with a reply, practically dragging Twenty Four away with him. He was not eager to speak to the chaplain, but Berlitak was a talker and word would get around regardless. This squad was the dumping ground of the unusual and the non-compliant chapters. A few of them, like the epistory, had been subsequently kicked from other, more celebrated squads. Their mannerisms clashed too strongly with those of, what was often referred to as...purer ranks. In other words, his space marines were too unsettling and off kilter. They belonged nowhere else else but with their own sort. Naori hated it. Hated that he was one of those space marines himself. Hated that he was the leader of this squad…

“What the hell was that all about?” Twenty Four asked, irritated but not protesting against being dragged. 

The Mortifactor stopped and let the deathrider go, almost forgetting she was there. “Just the wolves showing their teeth, nothing more.” 

Her eyes were red and watery, nose still bleeding in tiny drops. He couldn’t smell it as strongly anymore, but he suspected that Berlitak had gone a little deeper than he should have.

“...we should get you to the apothecarium.”

Apparently that surprised Twenty Four. “What for?”

“I can smell the crisped flesh through your uniform, death worshipper.” He growled. “Unless you wish to invite infection, I suggest you submit yourself.”

Her suspicious glare remained, but she changed direction and continued to jog at the Mortifactor’s side. “I’m surprised I’ve not been interrogated or killed.”

“More than likely you’ll just be added to the slave ranks. But I doubt you want that.”

“I really don’t care to be honest. Not like I have anyone or anything left to lead.” She replied. “I don’t know why you brought me here. I don’t think the Watch Master needs a report from me.”

He wanted to throw her across the hall. “So you’re refusing rescue, is that it? I offer an honor ritual to share in the kill and you assume to know what the Watch Master wants?”

“And you seem to think this is the first time I’ve served along Astartes. I know how some of you think. Most of you don’t give a grox’s arse about humans and neither do I. Of course I’m suspicious because you’re being oddly nice while the rest of your squad looks at me like I’m a particularly interesting insect.” 

Naori almost laughed. Her boldness was truly astounding and the point she made so blunt as to be true. This was the only human he’d ever met that knew she was an insect and simply didn’t care. Her lack of fear might as well be a drop of blood in the water. The sharks would come to sniff her out. 

Speaking of…

Nikau was the newest member of his squad and one of the few Naori legitimately got along with to some extent. He was a hulking beast of a man sheathed in grey skin and crawling white tattoos edging onto the hard points of his face. Like Naori his teeth were unnaturally sharp, but his eyes were pure black instead of merely red like the Mortifactor’s. He was also the only member of the squad that did not speak. Nikau had taken his vow of silence half a century before and communicated through battle cant and what few expressions remained to him. Carcharodon Astra his chapter was called. Or, Space Sharks, in low gothic. Twenty Four seemed to recognize his chapter icon, which surprised Naori more than anything else. As was her completely unafraid regard. 

Nikau sniffed at her, as if scenting blood before looking up at his squad leader, eyes blank but brows furrowed. 

“She is a guest, brother. A survivor from the last mission.” After a pause, he added. “She is mine to claim.”

Nikau was not one to question, wrinkling his nose at the woman before righting himself. Apparently this was enough to accept Twenty Four, brushing past her and Naori. 

The Apothecarium, when they reached it, was a strangely quiet place with a strangely quiet and obscure master. The brother who occupied it had no name besides the moniker Styx and no chapter to speak of. A blackshield. He never so much as removed his helm and his serfs were permanently under his exclusive authority. At some point Avraham had attempted to question one of them, but they had died on the spot. Styx had them all wired to a kill switch that prevented even the slightest leak of information. Were it not for his discretion and knowledge of obscure geneseed codes, the blackshield would have been under serious sanction. Avraham approved of his use of serfs, apparently. As did the chaplain. 

A few of those serfs collected Twenty Four, parting her from Naori’s side. The Mortifactor watched her go for a moment, half thinking she might try to fight them. But the notion quickly passed through his head, instead diverting himself into the domain of the dragon that lurked here. Indeed Styx looked the part. Almost as heavily modified as Jurulius himself, the apothecary had all of the barings of a great wyvern crotched over a carcass. Naori did not immediately recognize the corpse he was hunched over, but figured out purely from the smell. It was a tyranid, likely plucked from some stray planet. A unique strain that never got to reproduce for one reason or another. Styx had all but brutalized the corpse and was busy preserving its organs in a collection of sealed jars and sample vials. He sounded displeased by Naori’s interruption. 

“The Watch Master already told me.” Styx grunted by way of greeting. “About the woman. Berlitak is going to end up doing unspeakable things to her if you don’t eat her yourself.”

“He can try. She is merely here as a guest. My guest.”

“Is that so? And what do you plan to do with her afterwards? If lord Hades sees her you’re going to have to clean what’s left of her off the bulkheads.” 

“I have no intention of showing her to the chaplain, or letting him know she’s here. He can stay in the chapel and gnash his teeth all he wants.” 

Styx was not jesting. The chaplain, lord Hades, was a Minotaur. An especially bellicose example at that. Ejected from the last squad because of an...altercation with an Ultramarine. There were rumors, Naori heard, that his victim was now consigned to a dreadnaught's coffin. Naori could never fathom harming another battle brother so severely. But, apparently, that’s what Hades’s chapter was known for. There was a reason they were all but banned from the Realm of Ultramar. Yet another reason he often despised his squad…

Naori made no further comment however, because Styx was stripping his armor and hissing at the amount of post-burn inflammation plaguing Naori’s still healing skin. The Mortifactor didn’t realize how bad it was until the smell of his own singed dermis made him hungry. Without warning, Styx snarled and injected him with something directly into the Maorifactor’s spinal cord. Had he less discipline he would have clocked the apothecary in the temple. Instead, he held his place, pounding a fist into the table beside him.

“That hurt.”  
Styx ignored him. “You’re going to be shedding dead skin like a serpent for the next few hours. I boosted your healing factors with a stim injection. Now get out of my apothecarium.”

“And the woman?”

There was a pause. The blackshield was monitoring something on an oculus just off to his right. 

Naori shoved close. The oculus showed Twenty Four, perched on one of the tables while a serf nervously tried to look her over. It wasn’t the extent of her burns that made him stare but the massive blackwork tattoo covering the whole of her back. Immediately he recalled the death sleep and the dream that was forced upon it. The skull. It was a skull stitched into her back, staring back at him like a wrathful god of beasts. It was that of a horse rather than an elk, but the impression it gave him was the same. That is, until a serf attempted to get her to turn around. Bare chested, and indeed all the serfs were male, Twenty Four answered by putting her elbow into the man’s face. There was no audio, but Naori imagined it was more than a little...crunchy. The serf went down and did not get back up. 

“I should go.”

Styx looked at him with the same deathly silence as a snake fixing to bite. The Mortifactor quickly tramped his way out, meeting an indignant Twenty Four by the time he was clear. She had replaced her shirt, but the great coat hadn’t been retrieved. 

“They weren’t going to look at your chest.” Naroi began to say.

“They were all shitting themselves. One of them was going to end up with my elbow in their face regardless.” 

Perhaps Hades wouldn’t mind the woman after all...but that was not where he was going. Stripped down to his body glove, the Mortifactor had little other choice but to return to his chambers. In all likelihood Styx would send for Jurulius to collect his armor. That was fine by him. Twenty Four kept pace with her strange, cantering gait. They passed no other humans which she seemed pleased with, turning sharply down a black iron corridor lined with block script and tracking cameras. Nothing else down here was mortal save for the Excoriator’s whip slave. A withered woman and the only other female in the station. But she never left his chambers. Naori doubted she even had a name. Then, neither did Twenty Four.

Comforted by the scent of old bone and ash, Naori was glad to be back in the only other place he could safely call home. With Posul gone and the chapter nearly wiped out, the Deathwatch was a bittersweet haven. His chambers were large, but seemed cramped thanks to the hundreds of bones and trophies lining nearly every surface. Skulls dominated the walls, the largest of which glared at him from the ceiling. Things existed here that would never be seen in the Imperium again. Things Naori himself had brought to extinction, such was the exclusivity of the species displayed here. Twenty Four’s hoofbeats slowed to a stop, staring at one skull in particular. He followed her gaze. It was an equestrian skull, of a beast that had been roughly his size and possessed a few too many legs. He had mistaken it as a chaos beast of some sort until it didn’t dissolve into the aether when it was slain. The damned thing nearly killed him. Before he could stop himself Naori was relying the tale of it to the deathrider. 

“Mm, it was about as big as Harpy was, I think.” The woman commented, as if deep in memory. 

Naori lost interest in the conversation, moving to one of the cryo units hooked into the wall at the back of the room. It stored meat, mostly, but the bottom layers were chock full of extracted venoms and poisons, frozen to preserve their potency. An experiment of his, really. He had yet to find any suitable for Drukhari, but he liked to think himself close. 

Since serving the Long Watch, he refused to eat nutrient gruel or rations bars, preferring the hardier taste of prey when he ate. It helped...pull back the hunger. Reminded him of the home he’d lost. Of brothers now with the Emperor. Of the chapter master, slain in his own monastery. 

He let the memories batter his mind as he pulled a flank of meat from the unit, letting it plop onto the flensing table nearby. In other circumstances he would have simply sliced the meat and ate it as is. He no longer suffered from such things as food poisoning anymore, but he remembered how to cook. A fire was all it took, and one was always smoldering in the center of the room. Old bones, hair and other kindling from kills he did not value. It made the air smell pungent, but Twenty Four didn’t seem to care. Indeed she looked at the meat with as much hunger in her eyes as he. He offered her a handful of fresh bones. Phalanges from an eldar. They had good lean, tender marrow that contained more protein than it should. He popped his own set into his mouth, chewing with naturally sharpened teeth. Twenty Four did the same, breaking them open with her molars. It had been a while since he tasted human flesh, but found xenos flavors and nutrient values far better than his own species. As much as his squadmates would like to think otherwise. 

The meat, too, was of good protein value. More than human, certainly, and it cooked quickly and easily. He did so more to prevent Twenty Four from becoming ill than for actual flavoring. He could tolerate almost any raw meats, and often did when time was painfully short. But the women could not, and so when the meat was well done he removed it from the fire and they ate. It was a comfortably silent affair. Gladly so, for he had little say and her even less. There was something to be respected about that. There was still the question of what to do with her...but for now he could not bring himself to care. Honor had been served according to ritual. That would be enough to satisfy him. For now.


End file.
